John Rowan

John Rowan (12 July 1773-13 July 1843) was a member of the US House of Representatives (DR-KY 3) from 4 March 1807 to 3 March 1809, succeeding Matthew Walton and preceding Henry Crist, and a US Senator from 4 March 1825 to 4 March 1831, succeeding Isham Talbot and preceding Henry Clay.

Biography
John Rowan was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1773, and the family departed for Kentucky in 1783, settling in Bardstown in 1790. Rowan was a representative to the state constitutional convention in 1799, and he controversially killed a man in a duel after a drunken altercation during a game of cards, although he was acquitted by the judge. In 1804, Governor Christopher Greenup appointed Rowan Secretary of State, and he went on to serve in the Kentucky House of Representatives before serving in the US House of Representatives from 1807 to 1809. In 1819, he was appointed to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, serving until his resignation in 1821. He was again elected to the state legislature in 1823, and he enacted laws favorable to the state's debtor class in the aftermath of the Panic of 1819. The Court of Appeals struck down debt relief as unconstitutional, leading to Rowan leading a failed effort to impeach the offending justices and demanding the abolition of the "Old Court". The "New Court" faction of the legislature elected him to the US Senate in 1825, but, at the end of his term in 1831, the American Whig Party (now dominant in the legislature) replaced Rowan with Henry Clay. He became the first prsident of the Louisville Medical Institute and the Kentucky Historical Society, and he died in 1843.